The Reisig family – former residents of Aldergrove – are seeing the holidays in a whole new light after Matt miraculously recovered from the rare onset of a syndrome (Guillian-Barre) that paralyzed the 32-year-old father in March. (Submitted photo)

‘I’m just happy to be alive’: Once-paralyzed B.C. father makes a full recovery

Matt Reisig recovers, celebrating a Christmas he once thought impossible

Now, Reisig hopes to raise awareness about GBS – a mysterious inflammatory disorder where the immune system attacks its nerves instead of the virus the body is sick with, according to Muscular Dystrophy Canada.

There is no known cause for the condition.

Initially after falling ill, Reisig – a small-business owner and painter – remembers trying to push back client appointments one week, offering them a discount as an incentive for waiting.

But within seven days, on March 7, the 32-year-old father would be intubated and on life support.

“It’s still hard to talk about,” Reisig told the Aldergrove Star.

“I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through.”

After the initial GBS diagnosis, the disorder sucked the “drive” out of him, along with the loss of his motor skills except for slight head, shoulder, and face movements including nods and eyelid twitches.

“I thought GBS had ruined my life,” Reisig told the Aldergrove Star.

Through it all, his wife Ashley stuck by his side at Surrey Memorial Hospital’s intensive care unit, managing to sleep nightly on a pull-out couch in his room.

“I would come home once every four days or so,” she explained. Even her mother, Ayla’s grandmother, relocated from Kamloops to care for the one-year-old full time.

Ayla was uncomfortable and scared seeing her dad incapacitated.

Ashley became Reisig’s main mode of communication, and ultimate source of hope.

She tuned-in to what her paralyzed husband was mouthing with his lips.

And for when she wasn’t in his room, Ashley made a whiteboard list of Reisig’s needs and feelings.

For instance: “I need… suction, a nurse, my wife. Or I feel cold, pain,” she said about the list. Reisig reacted to truths pointed out the only way he could, in minute movements.

“When Matt was at his worst, I was constantly telling him, ‘It’s going to be okay, I know it isn’t now but it will be’ and, ‘This will end. This isn’t forever’ and ‘You’re going to make it through this.’”

A turning point came after Reisig faced a week of especially painful nerve pain, but with extreme effort, moved his fingers.

Unbeknownst to Reisig, Ashley had been posting regular status updates to her Facebook page, chronicling 147 days of her husband’s condition.

Soon the statuses became the only connection the patient had to the outside world.

Bedridden and defeated, “it got to the point where if Ashley wasn’t there I would ask others to read my update and the comments,” Resig retold.

When he managed to gain wrist and arm movement, he read through all the messages on his own and “had a good cry,” he said.

“You don’t really know how big your village is until you’re going through something.”

An online GoFundMe account for the family has raised over $20,000, which “got [them] through” living and medical expenses, and is still able to accept donations.

There are two days in hospital Reisig will always remember: his wedding anniversary and his first real meal – a reuben sandwich after months of feeding tubes turned-to liquids.

On the Reisigs’ fourth wedding anniversary, he asked his physiotherapist to help him sketch a heart on canvas with the words “I love you.”

The artwork that Resig said “looks like our daughter did it” now rests on their bedside table at home.

Throughout the five-month ordeal, Reisig said he lost a total of 45 pounds, all of which he has gained back, “and five pounds more,” he chuckled.

Undoubtedly, the most crucial part of Reisig’s recovery from GBS was “getting off the ventilator,” Ashley explained. “We would go down to the lowest level of it and then Matt would panic.